Stone Tape
by Solstice Zero
Summary: The team investigates the ruins of an ancient Welsh castle, with disastrous consequences. Pre-"Fragments". Now Complete.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note:**__ I'm taking a lot of liberties with this one, and I do hope that you'll forgive me for any glaring historical inaccuracies. I did as much research as I possibly could – I can't tell you how many pictures of castles I've looked at for the last few days – but that can't really make up for my never having been inside of a Welsh castle. The closest I've been to being inside of a castle is Cinderella's in Disney World. I do not come from a cultured place. Why then, you ask, did I set this in a castle?_

_Well. I like castles. And it's Wales._

_

* * *

  
_

Owen shoved a box of equipment into Ianto's arms. "I feel like a tourist."

"Technically, you are." Ianto shuffled the box into a better grip. "Would you like a brochure?"

"Oi! I've lived here long enough to be tired of bloody castles."

Gwen laughed, reaching into the back of the SUV for the final box. "I'm sure Ianto could give you a guided tour, if you like."

Owen hefted a case of electronics. "Blah blah blah, people with swords, blah blah blah, the ancient Welsh language, blah blah blah, and here it still stands. That cover it?"

"You must have been a joy in school," Ianto drawled, and started down the path toward the tourist information center.

Gwen caught up with him. "It is a bit spooky, though, at night. It's no wonder they've been having ghost sightings."

"Total rubbish," Owen griped behind them. "Jack didn't have to drag us out here to play Ghost Hunters. We could have monitored the rift activity from Cardiff."

Gwen looked back at him. "He probably wanted to get us out of the hub for a while. Fresh air, all that."

"Yes, because that always goes so well."

They'd reached the entrance; Ianto held the door open for them. Jack and Tosh were bent over Tosh's computer equipment, deeply concentrated. At the sound of the door closing, Jack glanced up, then straightened.

"O-kay!" he said, putting his hands on his hips like the most cliché of superheroes. "A castle with reports of hauntings and rift activity. Tosh says she's never seen this kind of thing before, so it's bound to be interesting. Owen, you and I will take the upper parts of the castle. Gwen and Ianto, you take the lower parts. Tosh'll stay here in the office and monitor for us." He looked back at her. "Make sure you warn us if there's anything coming up."

Tosh nodded.

Jack turned to back to them with a big smile on his face. "All right. Move out!"

He swept out of the room. Owen looked at Gwen and Ianto. They had identical smirking expressions.

"'Move out', he says. That coat is going to his head." Owen shook his head, following Jack out of the door.

Gwen turned to Ianto, offering her arm. "Are you going to keep me safe from the ghosts, Mr. Jones?"

Ianto took her arm and led her out of the door with a wave to Tosh. "I think that you can more than handle yourself against things that don't exist, PC Cooper."

"Ahh, not a believer, then. All of the things you've seen in this job, and you don't believe in ghosts?"

Ianto looked at her, then clicked his torch on and shined it on the dirt path in front of them. "You've seen as much as I have. Hasn't a lot of what's happened to us led you to think that there's really nothing after we die? We've heard it enough times. 'There's nothing, it's darkness.'" He guided her around a stone in the middle of the path. "People might believe that they've seen things like ghosts, or they could be caused by some psychological or neurological event that we don't understand yet. But as for spirits, the dead walking around – I can't really believe that. When you die, that's it."

Gwen glanced at him, his very serious face, then pointed up the path at the shapes of Owen and Jack approaching the castle entrance. "There's proof against your theory. Jack's died probably more times that he can count. And Owen – well, he's still wandering around, breathing or not."

Ianto shook his head. "It isn't the same. You know what I'm talking about. The people we've brought back with the glove – gloves. Even Owen said it. There's nothing."

"You really know how to make a girl feel safe on a cold night in a crumbling castle, Ianto."

Ianto gave her a sheepish grin. "Sorry. These places put me in a mood. Too much history."

"I thought you liked history. The Electro and all that." Gwen clicked her torch on. They'd reached the entrance of the castle. She could faintly hear Jack and Owen heading higher. She swept the light over the old walls.

"Too much violent history, then." He followed her inside. "What exactly are we looking for?"

"Not sure." She walked carefully, slowly bringing the torchlight from one side to the other. "Tosh is supposed to tell us if there's any activity coming. Other than that, I guess we just keep our eyes open for people with swords through their stomachs."

"Cheerful."

"Torchwood for you."

They fell silent, moving along the dark, close passages of the castle. Ianto could feel the age of the place, like a weight pressing down on them.

"Jack looked excited," Gwen said, and Ianto could hear her smile as she walked in front of him.

"Jack's sense of nostalgia is very complicated." Ianto shone his torch down a deserted hall to his left. "A man from the future who can talk about 'the good old days' when spelling wasn't standardized and carriages weren't quaint. I think he just likes to see things he didn't help make."

"You never know," Gwen said, turning through a small entryway into another clausterphobic hall. "You could find his initials carved somewhere."

"'CJH wuz here'," Ianto said grimly, and Gwen laughed.

Ianto's comm beeped, and Jack's voice rang in his ear. "How are you guys doing down there?"

Gwen tapped hers. "Fine so far. Nothing to report."

"Lots of stone," Ianto added.

"In a castle? Never!" Owen's voice, sounding somehow more gruff through electronics.

"Is sarcasm difficult for the dead?"

"Would you like to find out?"

"Boys, play nice!" Jack's voice. Ianto heard Gwen stifling a giggle up ahead. He smiled a little.

"Gwen, Ianto, I want you to start heading down to the lower levels. That's where most of the activity has been reported. But be careful. This place might be a little unstable."

Gwen turned to look at Ianto with her eyebrows raised, the silent question, 'Are you ready?' Ianto nodded his reply and followed her down a sloping hall.

It was immediately darker at the end.

Ianto felt Gwen shiver beside him. "Well, this got old fast."

He hummed his agreement, lifting his torch and pointing it in either direction. The place suddenly reminded him of a labyrinth.

He whispered, "'So Daedalus made the endless pathways of the maze, and was scarcely able to recover the entrance himself. The building was as deceptive as that.'"

Gwen looked at him. "What's that?"

"Ovid's Metamorphoses." He stepped forward, into the dark. "Daedalus built the maze that the Minotaur was kept in. Half bull, half man."

"Remind me never to take you to a museum." Gwen kept close to him, her eyes a little too wide. "You'll start quoting the Bible and Shakespeare and we'll never get out of there."

He grabbed her hand. It trembled slightly. "We're fine," he said, quietly. "No such things as ghosts."

He heard Gwen's breath catch.

She whispered, "What do you call that, then?"

He turned, following the beam of her torchlight.

At the end of the hall, there was a man. Blood dripped from some unseen wound and down his forehead, into his eyes, which were open wide, but did not reflect the light. The light passed through him and against the wall behind him. He stood with his hands at his sides, his mouth opening and closing like he was trying to speak.

Ianto stepped forward. "Are you all right?"

The man stretched out a hand, like someone drowning, reaching toward them in desperation. Then his eyes rolled back into his head and he disappeared.

Gwen's hand was clamped so tightly onto Ianto's that he was afraid she would break it. He didn't much mind, at the moment. He tapped his comm quickly. "Jack, we've just seen something."

"What was it?"

"A man in period costume. Bleeding from a head wound, standing at the end of a hall. I'm not sure if he could see us or not. He didn't answer me when I spoke to him and he disappeared after a few seconds."

"Okay, well. Now we know that they weren't kidding. Toshiko, was there any rift activity near Gwen and Ianto just now?"

Ianto heard Tosh answer, "Just a minute-" then the sound of typing. Finally, "No. Nothing at all in the entire area."

"So the sightings aren't caused by the rift." Jack hummed thoughtfully, a chin-stroking type of sound that Ianto knew was for their benefit, and he heard Gwen laugh beside him in spite of herself.

"What could be causing them, then?" Ianto asked, sweeping the torchlight in both directions, in front of them and behind.

"We'll find out, I guess. You all right to keep going?"

Ianto looked at Gwen, his turn now to give her the raised eyebrows. She nodded.

"We're fine. We'll keep you posted."

"That's what I like to hear." Jack tapped off.

Ianto squeezed Gwen's hand and let go. "You didn't scream," he observed.

"I don't _scream. _I'm not five." She pushed on ahead of him and Ianto grinned after her. Not one to long appear the damsel, Gwen Cooper.

She stopped at the end of the hall and shined her torch left, then right. She looked back at him. "Do you think we should split up?"

He laughed. "Is that how we draw out the ghosts? Horror movie tropes?"

"I'm glad you take your job so seriously, Ianto." Gwen stepped into the intersection. "I'll go right. You go left. When you get to the end, let me know what direction you're going." She started off.

"Keep your comm open!" he called after her.

She raised her hand in response.

He turned and started off into the dark. It really was like a labyrinth. He could almost hear the pounding hoofbeats of the Minotaur, somewhere out in the endless passageways. This was what he had always imagined it would be like; surrounded by stone, in the dark, feeling isolated and underground. He shivered and swung the torch from side to side, trying to shake off the grim metaphor.

Distantly, there was a low rumble.

He tapped his comm. "Gwen, did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Is there a storm outside?"

"I don't think so. It looked clear when we were walking up."

"I thought I just heard a -" He was cut off by another rumble, louder this time.

"What was that?" Gwen, sounding surprised.

"Tosh? What's going on out there?"

Tosh's voice, confused: "Nothing. I'm not picking anything up at a-"

The ground fell out from under Ianto's feet. There was a huge sound, like a tree cracking and falling, and Ianto was thrown against jagged piles of stone, digging into his back. He heard something falling to the ground close by, but could see nothing – everything was dark – he didn't know where he was, and the ground was shaking around him, rising up and down like waves, battering him with rocks and dirt.

Then, it stopped. Everything became calm.

In his ear, he could hear Gwen shouting, "Ianto! Ianto, are you all right? Ianto!"

Then he passed out.

* * *

_**A/N 2:** I did not intend for this to be a two-parter - it was supposed to be a long short story. But the writing is going slowly, and I want to keep up my pace of one story/chapter per day. The second part, which is hopefully the final part, will be uploaded the second it is finished and edited. Sorry about the inconvenience - I really don't want to ALWAYS end on cliffhangers. It just kind of happens that way. _


	2. Chapter 2

"Gwen, Ianto? You okay?"

Gwen ran down the corridor, tapping the comm in her ear. "Jack! There was just some kind of earthquake. Ianto isn't answering me." Her torchlight bounced crazily over the stone floors and walls. "I don't know where he is, we split up a few-" She stopped dead, staring.

"What? Gwen, what is it?"

"The walls," she said, quietly, wide-eyed. "The walls caved in. Ianto went down this way."

"I'm coming. Stay where you are."

- - -

Jack turned to Owen. "Go down to Tosh and figure out what just happened. That wasn't a normal earthquake."

"You're telling me." Owen hurried out of the room. Jack followed, running.

- - -

Ianto gasped awake, coughing stone dust and rolling over in a litter of rock. He took a quick assessment – arms legs neck head nose I'm fine – and opened his eyes.

He could see nothing. It was completely dark.

He felt around himself, fingers stretching, arms straining, trying to find his torch. He didn't want to move. There was a dull pain at the back of his head. A rivulet of something – blood, he thought, but he couldn't see – ran down the side of his face.

In his ear, tinny and desperate: "Ianto? Sweetheart, answer me!"

"Gwen," he choked. It was a strangled noise. He cleared his throat. "Gwen, I'm here." That was a little better.

"Oh, thank God!" The relief in her voice was palpable. He almost felt better, hearing it. Hooray, he wasn't dead.

"What happened?" he asked. He tested his arms, trying to lift his upper body. They were fine. He sat up, reaching blindly up and around him. There was nothing nearby.

"We don't know yet." She paused. "Whatever it was, it made the walls cave in."

He blinked. There was no difference, his eyes opened or closed, and that scared him a little. "I'm trapped in here?"

"We'll get you out. Don't worry."

"Are Jack and Owen all right?"

"They're fine. It didn't really affect them up there. Owen's gone to help Tosh and Jack's coming – oh, here he is."

Jack's voice: "Are you okay, Ianto?"

"Fine," he said. "But I've lost my torch and I can't see anything."

"Can you hear us anywhere but in your bluetooth?"

"No. Yell louder?"

There was no answer. Ianto waited.

Jack came back, "Did you hear that?"

"No."

"How far down this hall did you go?"

"Pretty far, I suppose. Where are you?"

Gwen answered, "About ten meters from where we split up."

Ianto estimated roughly the distance he had walked after splitting up with Gwen. He sighed. "There's about five hundred meters of collapsed castle between us."

He heard Jack curse, then silence, the comms muted while, Ianto supposed, Jack and Gwen figured out what they were going to do. He opened and closed his eyes again. There was literally no difference at all. As if there were no light anywhere, nothing to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. Carefully, he climbed to his feet, swaying a little bit but staying upright, the pain at the base of his skull throbbing dully. He reached out in either direction. His fingers brushed nothing. He shuffled his feet slowly, moving little by little in a direction that he hoped would get him to a wall.

His foot caught on something and he swayed off balance, then toppled to the ground, landing hard on his side. He cursed loudly, rolling over to clutch his arm.

Jack's voice, back in his ear: "You okay?"

"Yes, fine," he answered, annoyed. He opened his eyes.

He could see.

There was light, somewhere. He looked behind himself.

Then he shouted and scrambled backwards, ignoring the sudden, blinding pain in his wrist, because there was someone standing there in the middle of the corridor three meters away from him, someone with her arms outstretched and her mouth open in a silent scream and she was _on fire_.

And then Ianto could hear the scream, could hear it reverberating through his head, the absolute horror and pain of it, and then _he_ was on fire. He could smell his own hair burning and feel his skin start to bubble and crack and he was shouting and trying to put himself out and somehow drowning in _fire_ and the smoke from his own clothes and gasping for breath –

And then, nothing.

No light. No burning.

Everything was quiet again.

Then Jack, shouting in his ear, "What's going on? Talk to me, Ianto!"

Ianto was still breathing hard. He felt his clothes, his skin, his hair. Nothing burned. He could remember the pain, but couldn't feel it. "I'm fine," he said, knowing he sounded terrified but suddenly not caring.

"What happened?"

"I – I don't know." He held his wrist. That pain was still there. Sprained, probably, from the fall. "There was a woman. She was on fire. Then I was on fire. Then it stopped."

"One of the ghosts?"

"Yes."

"And you could feel what she was feeling?"

"Yes."

Gwen, chiming in: "Like the ghost machine."

"I don't know," Ianto said. In trying to get away from the burning woman, he'd found a wall. He sat against it, cradling his wrist to his chest. "It never worked for me. But it sounds like it. I could feel-" He closed his eyes, wincing. "I could feel everything. The fear, the pain."

"It wasn't real," Gwen said, quietly. "It's all right, it wasn't real."

He didn't answer. He knew that. But it had certainly felt it.

"Ianto, Gwen and I are going to go outside and see if there's any way in on your side of the collapse."

"All right," he said. He started to pull himself up with his good hand braced against the wall. "I'll try and find something from inside."

"Are you sure you should be moving around?" Gwen asked, concerned.

"It's better than sitting in the dark."

"Tosh, Owen," Jack said, sounding like he was moving, "tell us the second you have that quake figured out."

"Got it," came Owen's reply. Then they were quiet.

Ianto moved very slowly through the dark, one hand trailing the wall, the other held to his chest, listening to the stone drip and sigh. Listening to the labyrinth.

- - -

"Whenever we bring the teaboy with us, something horrible happens. He's cursed."

"Will you _be quiet?"_ Tosh was typing rapidly at her haphazard computer setup, staring intently at the screen, trying to make sense of what was there.

Owen jumped off of the table he was sitting on. "What, are you carrying a torch for him now?"

"_No_, I just want to make sure that he's _safe._ If you're not going to help then just sit quietly, or go help Jack."

Owen sighed and leaned against Tosh's table. "What exactly are you doing?"

Tosh glanced at him, then back at the screen. "The earthquake wasn't actually an earthquake. It was – a riftquake, I guess. Something in this area is causing strain on the rift, making it unstable."

"What's causing the strain?"

"I don't know. I'm tracing the rift disturbance back to the center of origin – like ripples in a lake, after you throw a rock. If you follow the ripples back, you'll find the exact place that the rock hit the water. If I can find that, then the others will be able to stop whatever is causing the strain."

"Do you think that's what's causing the ghosts?"

Tosh shrugged. "They're probably connected, somehow. We'll have to find it to make sure."

Owen leaned over her shoulder. "How long's it gonna take you to find the center?"

"I don't know," Tosh said grimly. "The circles of rift disturbance have distorted slightly. It's going to take me a while to map them out properly."

Owen nodded. "Meanwhile, old Ianto's stuck down there in the dark."

- - -

Jack and Gwen stopped outside of the castle, looking in either direction. Jack pointed right. "You go around that way. Get to the collapse and find any way in that you can. A crack in the stone, if you have to. Anything that will fit one of us through. I'll go on the other side." He started away, but Gwen grabbed his arm. He looked back.

On the crest of one of the manicured hills that rolled up to the castle entrance, a little boy was standing and staring up at the sky. He was transparent, and buzzed slightly with static, winking in and out of sight.

"He's so sad," Gwen breathed.

Then he was gone. Gwen let go of Jack. He touched his comm. "Tosh, we just saw another ghost."

"It was different," Gwen said slowly, "It looked different. More washed out than the one Ianto and I saw inside."

"It might be that the further you are from whatever is causing them, the less clear the image is," Tosh said.

"So you do think it's like the ghost machine?" Gwen asked. "Something showing things that have happened in the past?"

"It's possible. Maybe instead of placing the viewer inside of the moment, it displays the moment in the area around the viewer. So it's possible for more than one person to see the image."

"Let us know if you find out anything else, Tosh." Jack tapped off and looked at Gwen. "You okay to go on your own?"

"I'm fine," Gwen said, shaking her head. "Fine. They're like old photographs. Nothing to be afraid of. Go on," she said, with a shooing gesture. "Let's hurry." She went off along the side of the castle. Jack looked after her for a moment, then went off in the opposite direction.

- - -

Ianto had been alone in the dark for half an hour, and it was beginning to get to him.

He'd fallen more than a few times, leaving him always anxious of the next step, his heart constantly in his throat against that nightmare feeling of losing his balance, crashing to the ground, having to orient himself again but never being able to, not really. It was too dark, and everything around him was too similar. All stone. All damp and close. Even without light he could feel how close it all was, pressing in on either side of him.

Jack's voice made him jump. "Ianto, how're you doing?"

He caught himself before the surprise made him fall. "Not terribly well, thanks."

"We'll have you out of there soon. Toshiko thinks she can trace the rift disturbance to its center, and we'll find out what's causing it. And the ghosts."

"Can we stop calling them ghosts? It's not helping."

"Sorry," Jack said, and then was silent.

Ianto stood still for a moment, leaning his head against the wall. Then he said, suddenly, "Jack."

"Yeah?"

"Keep talking to me."

"Why?"

He paused. "Because I'm terrified and I can't see."

It was Jack's turn to pause. Ianto could almost hear the gears working in his head through the bluetooth.

"What do you want me to talk about?"

"Anything," Ianto said, attempting a step forward.

He fell, and tried to catch himself with his injured hand. He cursed loudly.

"What happened?"

"I fell," Ianto hissed, sitting up. "I think I might have sprained my wrist earlier."

"Which wrist?"

"Left."

"Shame." Ianto heard Jack's grin. "I like that wrist."

"Well, it's not gone anywhere." Ianto pulled himself upright. "You can live without for a few weeks."

He managed a few steps without falling. He heard Jack take a breath, then say rather suddenly, casually, "Your father wasn't a master tailor."

Ianto halted, surprised. "No," he conceded. "He worked at Debenhams." He kept moving. "I take it you've known that since I said it."

"Why did you lie?" Jack didn't sound accusatory; just interested. Good thing, too, because if he'd been up in arms about _Ianto_ lying about something-

"It's a better story." Ianto reached the end of the corridor and turned right with the wall.

"You don't care that it isn't true?"

"No," he said, simply, edging around a pile of stone. "Where my father worked has no affect on me. On who I am. I could have said he was an astronaut, if I liked. But the situation didn't call for it."

"Sure it did. Aliens."

"We were talking about dresses."

"And aliens."

Ianto grinned in the dark. "It's always about the aliens with you. There's no way to reveal that your father was an astronaut flirtatiously."

"How about that your father was an alien?"

Ianto laughed. "We'll have to test that out some time. Role play."

"He wasn't an alien, was he? That's not something else that has no affect on who you are that you'd rather lie about?" This time, Ianto heard a very small, oddly dull edge to the question. He frowned.

"Not an alien, no. Disappointed?"

"Nope. Rather not have to deal with that." He heard Jack hesitate. Then, "You know, you could have told me the truth."

Ianto's brow furrowed. "I could have. But it doesn't matter."

"It does to me."

"_Why?_"

"Because I want to know you."

Ianto scoffed. "You've _known_ me in a lot of very interesting ways, Jack, but I don't think you want to know me like that."

"Why not?"

Ianto hesitated. "Because I'm – normal." He took a breath. "Because you'll run off again. And it won't have mattered how well you knew me. What my dad did. Where I went to school. Because you'll have gone."

- - -

Outside, Jack frowned down at the circle of his torchlight. "I won't."

"Won't what?" Ianto's voice sounded distant and tinny through the earpiece, and Jack was suddenly annoyed by that. This wasn't a conversation to be had through a quarter mile of darkness and stone.

Or maybe, to them, it was.

"I won't leave again."

Ianto sighed. "Don't make promises that you can't keep, Jack. You have no idea if you'll have to go."

Jack kept moving along the outer wall of the castle, searching for any fault or sag in the stone. "Can I promise that I'll come back?"

"You might not be able to."

"Can I promise that I'll try?"

He heard a short laugh. "Yes. I suppose you can promise that."

Jack's brow creased. "Why don't you trust me?"

Ianto sounded surprised. "I do trust you. With most things. I trust that you'll get me out of here, and I trust that you won't murder me in my sleep or anything unseemly like that. How don't I trust you?"

"To want to know you. To want to come back."

"It's because you're-" He heard Ianto heave a frustrated sigh, trying to find the right words. "You're too important. All of this is so small. I should have made Gwen talk to me – you and I can't have a conversation without it turning into a personal discussion."

"Don't change the subject."

"Jack, why do you _care?_"

Jack thought for a moment. "I guess I think it's strange that you don't."

"I just – I understand. I understand that, in the long run, all of this will turn out to be nothing for you. I'm trying-" He paused. "I'm trying not to care too much. Because I don't know how any of this is going to end up." He got quieter. "I don't want to give too much of myself. In case it all turns out to be nothing." He laughed. "If I'd been standing next to you just then, I never would have said that. I may still regret it."

Jack said quietly, "Whatever you give, I'll take."

He heard Ianto's surprised catch of breath, and it made him smile.

"When did you become the girl in this relationship, Jack?"

Jack laughed. "Well, there goes our serious discussion, then."

"Thank God. I felt a song coming on." He waited, then added softly, "Thank you, though."

"No problem."

"Found a way in yet?"

"Working on it."

- - -

Tosh tapped her comm. "Jack, Ianto?"

"Here."

"Here."

"I found the source of the rift disturbance. It's about 300 meters from Ianto." She traced the route on the screen with her finger. "Take the next left, then another left, then a right. It should be in a large room off of that hall."

"Shall I go and have a look, sir?"

"Be careful."

- - -

Ianto grinned. "Yes, sir." Then he tapped off.

He slowly made his way to the end of the corridor, then braved the open space away from the wall in order to go left.

Then he looked up and saw her.

She was radiating light, like a television on in a dark room.

"Lisa?" he whispered, his stomach dropping out at the very word.

She came toward him. She looked the way that she had the morning of the battle of Canary Wharf. Same clothes. The same smile she had worn, walking up to give him a quick kiss at his desk. The last one, before –

"Ianto," she said, standing right in front of him. "Have a good day." She bent as if to kiss him on the cheek, but disappeared before she reached him.

And Ianto was once again in the dark.

He pressed his earpiece. In a strangled voice he said, "Jack."

Jack came back, "What's wrong?"

"It's in my head. Whatever it is, it's using my memories."

"What'd you see?" Jack sounded suddenly on-alert.

"Lisa. The morning she died. She was so _happy_."

Jack paused. "I'm sorry."

Ianto shook his head, closed his eyes, tried to pull himself together. "It's fine. It's fine. Just memories."

Then when he opened his eyes, the room was thrown to red and filled with plastic sheets hung floor to ceiling, alarms screaming everywhere. He shouted and fell back against a wall. Then he saw himself. Dragging Lisa – half-converted, so _heavy_ – and he heard himself screaming for someone to help, anyone. Jack was yelling in his ear but he couldn't hear him over the noise of the alarms and the screaming from the conversion units and he'd been so _afraid _and _helpless_ then, trying so hard to save someone who was already gone-

Then it all disappeared. He breathed in and out, trying to control himself, trying not to get caught up in it, in the horrible, visceral memories.

"Ianto?"

"I'm fine," he told Jack, moving once again along the corridor. "It showed me Canary Wharf. When I find this thing, I'm going to kick it until it stops working."

"I'll help," Jack said gruffly, and Ianto laughed.

"Jack, Ianto!" Gwen's voice. "I found a way in. It's just a crack, but it's enough to get inside."

"Good," Jack said. "Once you're in, ask Tosh for directions to the – well, whatever it is. Ianto's heading there now."

"Will do." Then she was quiet.

Ianto kept going, following Tosh's directions. It was painfully slow going, made worse by the fact that every time Ianto blinked he was afraid he'd open his eyes again and be surrounded by some other horrible thing from his past. The fact that the only time he could see anything was when he didn't want to.

The dark has an interesting affect on the human mind. Left there too long, deprived of the sense of sight and given reason to fear, one becomes hyper-conscious of one's breathing. Of the placement of one's feet. Of the feeling of a wall under one's hand. There comes a hysterical certainty, at the back of one's mind, that one is truly blind.

In the kind of darkness where one cannot see their hand in front of their face, the kind of darkness that Ianto had been submerged in for the better part of an hour – one could easily go mad.

Ianto stumbled into a cannibal's kitchen.

The others being forced to their knees, Gwen shrieking and Tosh asking what they've done with him – "Where's Ianto?" – and then being dragged up, burlap sack pulled away, his bruised face slapped so that he jerked awake.

"Time to be bled."

And God, that fear.

The absolute panic of that moment, and Ianto could see it in his own eyes, in an image displayed before him in color and surround sound and that visceral, emotional element that put him _there_ again, in that kitchen with the certainty that he was going to die. Soon. No one to save him, that knife so close to his neck – "Definitely makes the meat taste better" – and his own gagged cries.

He didn't know he was screaming until Gwen's arms were around him.

He breathed, hyperventilating, and clutched at her coat, his eyes huge over her shoulder while she whispered comforting things that he couldn't hear over the sound of his heart beating.

Her torch was shining on the floor nearby. He could see. Just stone.

He relaxed.

"It's all right," Gwen was saying, her hand through his hair. "You're safe, it was just a memory."

He loosened his grip on her and sat back. He was shaking, but it was passing. He couldn't speak.

Gwen tapped her comm. "He's all right, Jack."

Ianto felt his own ear. His earpiece had fallen out at some point between falling down and sitting up. He reached over and grabbed Gwen's torch, tracing it along the ground until he found the small electronic. He picked it up and reattached it.

"I'm fine," he said. "Sorry."

Jack was quiet for a long moment.

"Just – get out of there as fast as you can."

"You don't have to ask us twice." Gwen stood up, then offered a hand to Ianto. He took it.

"Thanks," he said, with weight.

"It's fine." Gwen smiled and took her torch from him. "Come on. The sooner we find this thing, the sooner we can get out of here. I'm tired of bloody castles."

She started off down the hall, and Ianto followed her, staying close. Grateful for the light.

- - -

They found it where Tosh said it would be. It looked remarkably like a videogame console. The same sort of sleek design, LED-like lights visible from the inner workings. Gwen picked it up – it wasn't heavy.

"This little thing has been causing all of this trouble?" she asked, incredulous.

"It's always the small things," Ianto said.

"When it isn't the big things." Gwen turned back toward the entrance to the room and started off. "Come on. We can get out the way I came in. It's not far from here."

Ianto followed her to a small crack in the wall. He held the device while she went through, then handed it over and began to squeeze through the tiny opening. He took an offered hand and was pulled upright – and right into a hug from Jack.

Jack released him and smiled. "You made it."

"I did, yeah." Ianto felt more tired, he thought, than he ever had in his life. And that was certainly saying something.

They made their way down to the tourist office. Tosh whisked the device away from them the second they crossed the threshold and set to work figuring out how to turn it off.

"You can do that on the ride back," Jack said, and set Tosh, Owen and Gwen to work packing up the equipment. Ianto he told to stay seated in the office until they were done. He was too exhausted to protest.

- - -

Tosh, Owen and Gwen fell asleep almost the second the SUV pulled onto the road. Tosh had figured out how to turn the device off _on the walk to the car_. Ianto sometimes thought that Tosh was becoming too good at working alien technology.

Jack was driving, so Ianto sat in the passenger's seat, watching trees and fields rushing past the headlights. He leaned his head against the window, his breath condensing on the glass.

Jack spoke beside him, "I think I know what it is."

"What what is?"

"The device."

"What is it, then?"

"A stone tape."

"And a stone tape is?"

"A name that I just made up," Jack said, with a sidelong grin at Ianto. "But it fits. There's this theory in paranormal investigating called the 'stone tape theory'. It's based off of a television play from the seventies – never seen it, but I've heard that it's good. The theory is that certain powerful events can imprint themselves into the places they occurred. So this machine, using technology similar to our ghost machine, records the imprints – the emotional energy – and converts them into playable images. Complete with the emotions and physical feelings experienced during the events. It's an archival tool. Probably used by archaeologists."

"Alien archaeologists," Ianto muttered, his eyes closed. "And I suppose it can pick up the emotional energy attached to a person. What was it doing to the rift, then?"

Jack thought for a moment. "It was probably trying to convert the rift energy into a playable image. It may not have ever come into contact with that type of energy before. Trying to convert it might have put the strain on the rift, which caused the riftquake. It might also be why our stone tape was on the fritz."

"On the fritz?"

"No one was operating it, but it was still showing images at random intervals. Broken 'play' button."

Ianto propped his head up with his hand. "We never get anything through the rift with a warranty."

Jack glanced at him. "I don't think it came through the rift."

"Where'd it come from, then?"

Jack smiled. "Alien archaeologists. They probably left it in the castle to record the history of the place. Might have gotten scared off by the rift activity and left it behind."

Ianto stared out the window. He was quiet for a long time.

Then, without looking at Jack, he asked, "Why is it always like that?"

Jack glanced at him. "Like what?"

Ianto sighed. "The device is always harmless. A bit of alien scrapbooking. A stone tape. It's what it records that's the bad part. The stuff that it picks up from us. Dead men. Cannibals. We're the ones who make it horrible."

Jack put his hand on top of Ianto's. Ianto looked at him, surprised.

"I don't know," Jack said, sadly. "But you're right. It is us." He looked at the back seat, where Tosh had the device on her lap. "I wonder if they'll come back for it."

Ianto glanced back, too. "They won't want it now. Not unless they're masochists."

Jack looked at him and grinned a little bit. Ianto returned it. He twined his fingers through Jack's.

They rode in silence, with the all of the stone and the darkness fading behind them.

* * *

_**Author's Note:** I'm sorry that this is going up so late! I've literally been writing for twelve hours. It has never taken me this long to write 4,500 words. I pray that it never will again. I'm also sorry if there are some typographical errors; I did go through and edit to the best of my ability, but at this point I'm so tired that I can hardly read anymore. This is my level of dedication to you lovely people._

_On another note, I wrote a lot of this to "The Ballad of Ianto Jones", and man, if you ever want to burst into tears in the middle of rush-hour traffic, put that on your iPod and shuffle. Not a fun song. But awfully pretty._

_Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.  
_


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